Ad Fundum Calicis
by Amatara
Summary: John Locke still has a few things to figure out, and they don't all concern Jacob. Missing scenes from "Cabin Fever". Companion piece to "Vigilantes", which was Ben's point of view - this is Locke's.


His conscious mind says _run_, and yet, seconds after James and the others have sprinted for cover, he's still not running. Instead he finds himself staring, transfixed, at the black smoke's hurtling rampage.

Fear, he knows, would be the sensible thing. Keamy's men are frantic with it, bolting towards the tree line with the speed of desperation, but still, for some, not fast enough. Of course the creature's self-aware – he's known that ever since it looked him in the eye – but he wasn't sure if it was capable of cruelty too. Not until now, that is. He can't tell _how _he knows it, exactly, but the way it tears through the village, clawing at whatever prey it can find – that isn't just efficiency or purpose. It's _relish_.

Still, the flutter in his chest feels nothing like fear, and startlingly like wanting.

It's Ben's voice that shakes him out of it, shouting at him to go, to head for the trees. He blinks, and then the pillar of smoke is gone, vanished somewhere behind the barracks, only the stuttering light betraying its presence. In it, Ben looks barely sane, eyes red-rimmed and even wider than usual. But when he holds out his hands, Locke hands him the gun without a second thought.

He has half a mind of staying anyway, despite being told not to – or maybe because of it. It's only after Ben turns that he knows he _should_ go, leave Ben to regain his composure or whatever it is Alex's death just took out of him. God knows they'll all need it before this is over. As he skids to a stop beyond the tree line, he can't help wondering if Ben would have shown him the same courtesy, had roles been reversed. He has to admit he's not closer to answering that than he was when he first met the man. And then the obvious question is: does it even matter?

Maybe that's the point. That he _has _to be better than Ben.

If that's what the island wants, he has no intention of letting it down.

* * *

Night has fallen, in that way nights have on the island: a rushed slide into darkness, then silence. The silence is relative, of course, because there's always something to fill it: the whistling of wind through the leaves, a million noises of a million living things. Some drifting to sleep, some waking just now. This time, there's also the crackling of flames, and Hugo's snoring, low and irregular and not sounding at all out of place.

There's one piece of silence that doesn't fit, though, and it's Ben's.

"You all right?" Locke asks, careful to turn his face to where Hugo is sleeping, and not the other way. The question itself is pointless, he knows. If there's any word for this new Ben Linus, sitting ramrod-straight and unblinking across the fire, _all right_ is about as far from it as can be. But at least there's value in the asking. He's always believed in the power of words and, right now, words are the best he has to give.

Ben might just agree, because his eyelids flutter, once, in response. "I'm fine." His tone contradicting the statement, but still pointed enough not to invite protest. "_John_," he adds, tacking on the first name in what Locke knows can't be an afterthought. On any other day, he'd call it goading. Tonight, he'll give Ben the benefit of the doubt. For now.

"If you don't mind my saying, Ben, I don't think you are." He meets name with name like thrust with parry, and Ben smiles a rigid little smile in response. The kind that isn't a smile at all, and they both know it.

"Actually, I do mind, John." In a voice that, for all its languor, still manages to border on peevish. "I've also missed the part where you've suddenly become all-knowing. _Or _partial to my well-being, for that matter." Ben has his legs drawn up, and now he puts his arms across them, effectively hugging the shotgun in his lap.

"I'm not your enemy, Ben," he retorts, picking out a new piece of firewood and pausing before he holds it out to the flames. They lick at it haltingly, wisps of smoke curling around a damper patch. He presses down another image of the monster, so much deadlier than that little wisp, but once again he only feels awe, not fear. "Believe me, at this point, I have no desire to see you hurt."

Ben gives him a long, hard look. Then he says, "No, I suppose you don't," but in a voice that sounds almost regretful. Which suddenly makes a strange kind of sense – he's suspected for some time now that pain, whatever the source, is as much of an anchor to Ben as self-reliance is to _him_.Granted, it's not the most constructive of ways, but it seems to have worked for him for a long time now, so who is he to put a stop to it? Like _he_'s so skilled at coping, anyway, a little voice whispers, but he ignores it.

He stretches out with a grunt, bundling his backpack under his head. "Wake me in two hours, then," he says, closing his eyes and daring sleep to take him. But Ben isn't quite finished.

"What is it to you, John?" he drawls, almost tepidly. "Me being all right?" But there's an edge to his voice that wasn't there before. "No, don't tell me. Could it be – because you _need_ me to? Because, ironic as it is, if you let yourself believe someone like me can break, then what fate does that spell for you? _Could_ it?"

"If anything could break me –" Locks says, but his voice catches on a cough before he can go on. "It would have," he finishes, only the grit in his throat makes that sound pretty lame. And he supposes it's a testimony to the utter mess they're in right now, that Ben doesn't even call him on it.

"Don't bother worrying, John," he says, like Locke hasn't reacted at all. "I'm not throwing in the towel just yet."

And there's no excuse for that to come as a relief, none at all, but he knows that _Ben _knows it does.

* * *

His wake-up call is a muttered name, then the nudge of a gun barrel against his thigh.

"Sleep well?" Ben asks, as Locke works himself into a sitting position. He's not sure when he dozed off, exactly, though something tells him it's been well over two hours. With Ben's penchant for self-castigation, that's not quite unexpected. "From the look of it, I'd say you were."

Locke turns to find Ben perched over the fire, stoking it up with sharp, precise jabs. A touch of envy in his words, and for a second, the thought of Ben sitting there, watching him sleep, makes him feel almost exposed. Then a thought strikes him. "I _did _sleep fine, actually." Surprising himself with the truth of that.

Ben lifts his shoulders a little, looks out across the flying embers. "Make sure to enjoy it while it lasts, John," he says, with a sidelong glance. "The confidence. I assure you it won't." But the way he says it, it sounds less like a taunt than an expression of sympathy, which is a new enough experience that it makes Locke pause.

"Well, we'll see about that," he replies, keeping his own tone neutral. "Why don't you get some sleep? From the look of it, I'd say you should."

Ben's cheeks turn slightly pink at that, like they always do when his own words are used against him. Then he shrugs, and the emotion slides off him like water. "You didn't answer me, earlier, John," he says dully, still gazing ahead like a man in a trance. "Why is it you'd care?"

For a moment, Locke can't pin down what stings about that question; then, in a flash, there's that feeling again, the sudden urge to prove that he _does_ care. That he can, in fact, be a better man than Ben ever was, and maybe is supposed tobe, even if it kills him. "You mean, why should _I_ care when you wouldn't?" he retorts.

The look on Ben's face is barely veiled derision. "Don't flatter yourself, John." He shivers, then fingers the bloody cuff of his sleeve. "You know, I felt the same, once. Believed I was going to be a better leader than the one before me, a more decent father than my own…" Pained grimace. "I suppose my daughter would have something to say about that, if she was still around to say anything."

It's pure impulse when he deadpans, "Well, if it helps, Ben, you still did a better job than _my_ father."

Ben gives a soft, joyless chuckle, that somehow sounds more jarring than it should. "Except you're still here, aren't you? And she's not. So I certainly did a better job getting her _killed_."

"You know, you were right about my father," Locke goes on, without really knowing why, and Ben blinks as if caught red-handed. Which, in a way, he _is_. "I realize it wasn't intentional, that you were just setting me up for a task you thought I'd fail, but…" He darts a sideways glance at Hugo who, no surprise, is still sleeping like a baby. It's strange – he thought he was beyond feeling self-conscious about this, but clearly he's not. "When he was gone – it was like a weight lifted from my shoulders. I don't know what that says about me, but I suppose I have you to thank for it."

Ben, of course, chooses to ignore the candor in favor of the irony. "Well, what are you suggesting, John? That killing a person will improve my spirits? If memory serves, last time I tried that wasn't much of a success, now, was it?"

Locke has to smile at that despite himself, sobering at the look on Ben's face. "No… but you could start by getting the blood _off _you instead." That comes out as almost gentle, and he'd swear he saw Ben's eyes widen a fraction. Which figures; he's just surprised himself too. He pushes himself to his feet with a grunt, steps out of the campfire's wavering circle and towards the tree line. "I'll just be a moment."

In profile, in the firelight, Ben looks like some stripped-down version of himself, rigid and not quite steady.

* * *

When he comes back, Ben has actually peeled off his shirt, and is scrubbing the wet sleeves vigorously, with both hands. Probably trying to take the skin off his knuckles in the process, Locke thinks, with a pang of empathy that he wasn't expecting, and couldn't explain if he tried. But if Ben believes it'll help, why not?

"This all right, John?" Ben drawls, without turning. "You weren't hoping for a ceremonial burning instead?"

He shakes his head, silently, still waiting to cross into Ben's field of vision. Instead he notes, with just a tinge of self-consciousness, Ben's undershirt – plain, grey and unflattering – riding up at his back, revealing a blotch of gnarled tissue. Ben's surgical scar. He thought it would have healed cleanly by now, but instead, it looks more pronounced than he imagined. A jagged crisscross of pinkish-white, that he feels drawn to as if pulled by a magnet.

"Why –" he asks, raising his voice when Ben doesn't react. "Why hasn't it healed yet?"

Ben sighs, and for once it doesn't sound exaggerated, or feigned, or even surprised; only impatient. "Because no one thought about healing it, John," he says. And of course, he didn't need to ask what _it _was.

"I thought you said – you healed faster when I was around." And then he doesn't know if it's curiosity, or something else altogether, that makes him lower himself to his haunches, and ask, "May I?"

Ben's head comes up, not in a jerk but in slow motion, as if debating whether what he heard was real. Then, impossibly, his shoulders sag, and he nods. It's as if, Locke thinks as he examines the scar – not touching, just lifting the fabric a little to see – he's reached the mental point where he just wants it over with, where protesting's a nuisance more than anything else. For some reason, that bothers him more than the protest would have. _Far _more.

"Don't," he says, with a rush of frustration, palm closing on Ben's spine. "Don't act like –"

Ben flinches.

Ben _flinches. _It's a tiny movement, more a muscle spasm than an actual shudder, but still, Locke pulls his hand back as if burned. There's a second where Ben is just sitting, frozen, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere on Locke's far left, mouth pressed into a line. Then he breathes out – a short, soundless burst of air – and his eyes squeeze shut.

Looking down at Ben's temple, titled down and away from him, the smattering of bruises is still unmistakable, an ugly shade of mottled brown. There's one across his cheekbone that's barely the size of Locke's thumb, and before he knows where the impulse came from, his hand is hovering right over it.

Ben's mouth tightens, and he makes a noise that for a second Locke mistakes for anger. It's not.

"Come on, John," Ben says, and now he _is _goading. His eyes are still shut, like a sleepwalkers', so the clash between his tone and slack expression is even more disorienting. "How much harder can it be to put down that hand than to knife an innocent woman in the back?"

"I had no choice about that," Locke says, dismayed when it comes out sounding like an apology, and not like the hard fact it was. And then he doesn't know how he missed the tremor that's running, slowly, across Ben's frame. "You flinched," he says, marveling. "Why did you flinch? You knew I wasn't…"

Ben's eyes open, but he's still looking fixedly down. "Let's call it an unfortunate reflex, John, and keep it at that."

A muscle twitches in Ben's temple, close to where his thumb is, and Locke doesn't move his hand, but doesn't pull back either. "Are you…" He swallows. "Do you want to –"

"Do I want to _what, _John?" Ben says, flatly. "There's plenty that I want, but, last time I checked, nothing that was yours to give." His eyes flicker with an emotion that could be anger, or frustration, or fear, and then, almost defiantly, he turns around. It's as close as he can come without touching, and his breath pools in hot, rapid little puffs against Locke's throat. If that makes him uncomfortable – and it _has_ to – he's stubbornly not showing it, and then Locke knows, with absolute certainty, Ben's doing this as punishment. For both of them.

"That's not true," he says, but he doesn't quite remember what that was a reply to_._ Suddenly, there's nothing he wants more than to flee, to break away, and yet part of him doesn't – not if it's _him_, not being the first one to quit. It's not a stand-off, he knows that, but then it _is_, because Ben's just made it one.

When he leans back on his heels, it feels like losing more than just a confrontation.

Strangely, Ben's look tells exactly the same.

* * *

"Get some sleep," he says, lifting the rifle from Ben's hands as if, by taking it, he's proving something. Ben's grip on the barrel is tight, but not tight enough to be serious about not letting go; more like he _wants _Locke to make an effort to get it. A little distance away, Hurley turns and mutters something incoherent, and Locke lowers his voice.

"Let go of the rifle, Ben," he mutters, using the name for the same reason Hugo _doesn't_ use names. He names the people he cares about, whereas Hugo just cares about everyone. Everyone is _dude _to him, because – barring a few like Libby, Charlie, sometimes Jack – he could never choose between one person and another. Hugo would want to save everyone, always. Just like Hugo wouldn't sacrifice a friend for the island, or for anything else. Probably not even an enemy.

For him, though, as for Ben, that was never an option.


End file.
